


Nothing But a String of Numbers

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Community: rarewomen, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 19:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cyberpunk AU of Greek mythology. Ariadne is a hacker who fights the powers that control all the information. Persephone is her friend who just wishes she could go back to her virtual reality instead of being in the 'real' world. Together, they decide to make a mess of things, in the best way possible. </p><p>For the prompt from Runespoor: Ariadne and Persephone and other women in Greek mythology in a cyberpunk AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing But a String of Numbers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Runespoor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/gifts).



**_Ariadne_ **

I’m comfortable in the Labyrinth. I’m not supposed to be – in fact, that’s the point of it, to make hackers and other trespassers afraid to tread. They want us to get in, get out, take the easy exits so they can track our signal, so they can knock down our metal doors and lock us up in flesh space. In “real” space.

But if you’re used to it, if you’ve visited the Labyrinth since you were a girl, it’s a nice place to wander. All the data in the world right there, and all the pleasantly circuitous paths that constrain access, that turn information gathering into a quest instead of a chore. They built the Labyrinth for security – to make sure ordinary people didn’t have too much information – but of course for people like me, it just made information hunting more fun. 

Sometimes I feel like I could stay in the Labyrinth, browse around, follow the stray threads to see where they will go. Maybe linger on a dead end or two - nothing wrong with a little bitter with the sweet. Sometimes, I find it so restful that I almost forget what will happen if I don’t get out in time, if I don’t find what needs to be found.

This time, I don’t forget. I get the info and get out a good 30 seconds before a nanopatrol swings by. And this time... it's what I've been looking for all along. I was starting to lose hope that even existed, but now.... It's mine. 

Win.

Epic, legendary win.

I know just who to call.

 

000000000000000000000000000011001100110010

 

**_Persephone_ **

Ariadne’s coming over today.

Literally, she’s coming over. Her body in the physical space occupied by my body. It’ll take an hour for her to get here, but she wants to keep me off her machines. She’s protective like that – she knows that they’ll probably “disconnect” her some day and she doesn’t want them to know I’m helping her. So she’s coming here. To my body’s living space. 

Flesh is so tedious.

I’ve only been back in this hellhole “reality” for a couple of weeks, so the routines are still a little blurry. So it takes me a minute to remember that in this world, people like their little rituals of hospitality. But I’m here, and that’s just how it is, so I clean the table and put out a pitcher of Potable and some glasses.

Obviously, this is not where I want to be. But I don’t have a choice. The doctors said that I’m not going to last if I don’t spend six months “recuperating” for every six months I spend virtual. So spending six months a year in flesh is the bargain – the extremely reluctant compromise – I have to make with my own mortality.

I can’t wait until they figure out how to separate the mind from the body. 

Until then, it’s mostly hackers I hang out with. They’re an open-minded bunch, at least about this sort of thing (not like those judgmental “Flesh is Truth” fuckers). And hackers can talk to me in any season, even when my virtual self is laying low. 

The trouble with having hackers for friends, though, especially if they’re into all that social justice bullshit, is that they’re always going to pull you into some crazy scheme.  


Though truthfully, without Ariadne’s crazy schemes, I would probably have died of boredom by now.

And it’s only been two weeks.

When she finally gets here, even with my still-adjusting perception, I can see she’s excited. She knows better than to hug me (for which I’m fucking grateful), but as soon as I close the heavy door behind us, she’s grinning at me and practically jumping up and down. But I put out the stupid drinks already, so we sit and drink and she waves her glass around as she talks.

She’s so excited it almost makes me forget how dull her reality is. How hushed. 

“And you know what’s funny? About what this means. Some of them were like us. You know? They were tech geniuses, so it makes sense. That they would think like hackers,” Ariadne rambled. I didn’t want to argue when she was so happy. 

And she had a right to be pleased with her victory. There were rumors floating around for years about it – the infamous code that the first Daedalus Teams had hidden for future generations to find. But I’m a little more wary than she is. For one thing, we don’t know for sure if the rumors are true. 

I tell her this. “Remember -- all we know is that you found some ancient code – we have no idea yet what it does. It could be a trap to lead them to you, it could do something awful to random people – or it might not do jack shit at all. I’m happy for you, I am, but we need to be very. Fucking. Careful.”

“When am I not careful?” Ariadne says with a wink, and I give her an eyeroll. (The eyeroll, by the way, is one of the few things in flesh that I have a real aesthetic appreciation for.)  


After a long, weary discussion (I’m still getting used to having to breathe between sentences), we realize that we should do a test run on an isolated system. To see what we’re getting into. But a 100% isolated, unsurveilled, nano-inaccessible system is going to take more juice than we have. 

Time to call in another friend. An expert in isolation.

 

0010000101000110100111110010010100100010 

 

**_Ariadne_ **

I really should have asked who this other friend was. How was I supposed to know it was her? 

I can’t believe she recognized me, though. We’ve never met in flesh space, so she must have found a way to get into the official face files. 

Which does not make me jealous at all. 

As soon as she walked into Persephone’s apartment and saw me, she just laid into me. She started making accusations, started accusing me of being complicit with the i-ocracy. Even though she was the one who was bouncing hackers from the Labyrinth, she was the one who outed hacktivists for being ‘too moderate.’ What a hypocrite. Really, she deserved everything I gave her.

We yelled at each other for a good while, I have to admit. It hurt to use my physical voice so much, but she kept yelling, kept accusing, kept making snide comments about my so-called lack of radicalism, that I had no choice but to call her a sanctimonious, tactically clueless, intellectually facile pseudohacker. Repeatedly.

Finally, Persephone, who was drooping on the couch, her fingers on the bridge of her nose as if she were having another transition headache, said, “Enough! Minotaur! Ariadne! I DON’T CARE.”

“But she sent the Theseus virus to my mainframe!”

“No! Stop! You say you want to fight the power. Both of you. This is your chance. Personally, I don’t give a shit – I mean, seriously, what do I care who runs the prison I’m trapped in half the year. But you two say that this shit matters. You go on and on and ON about how ‘Information is Life.’ Well, now you have the information. You are on the brink of changing EVERYTHING. So you can argue about who wins the bestest-most-badass-hacker contest, or you can change the fucking world. But choose now. Because if I have to listen to this shit any longer, I’m going to put YOU two in virtual space and take away your code.”

Minotaur and I looked at each other. After a moment, we nodded and agreed to get to work.

We weren’t scared of Persephone. Really. We just, you know, respected the sound reasoning in her argument.

We set up Minotaur’s system and ran the test. 

When it was done, we all sat there in silence. 

The code worked. 

_The code worked._

 

100001101001010000000010001010100000010

 

**_Persephone_ **

It’s been more than five months since my idiot friends brought down the Labyrinth. 

I have to admit I’m pretty proud of them.

The Labyrinth had been hiding the key to its own destruction all along. There were investigations, of course. The most popular explanation is that one of the original Daedalus team who built it was actually a hacker named Athene. She knew that someday someone would find the code that would dissolve the walls that gave the info-ocracy its structure. 

Now, no data is safe. Anyone can find out anything.

They’re rebuilding, of course. The people who ran things still run things, so they’re protecting themselves. First thing they did was build a wall around their real identity. Then their money. Then they got to work hiding all the shitty things they did that they only wanted each other to know about.

But it’s not the same. They can’t count on the maze to protect them. 

Nobody can count on anything anymore.

The change has mostly been positive.

The optimists are saying that this is the revolution, that soon everything will be different and all of us will be free and we’ll share in building a new society. The Flesh is Truth crowd are being assholes as usual and saying that this is clear proof that we must return to the ‘natural’ order and make technology ‘subservient’ to pureflesh humans. The realists are saying that it’s probably only going to be a short while before we return to the status quo. But even they admit that until then, things are up in the air. Strange things can happen in those moments when everything falls apart and everything gets built again. Some of those things might even be good.

The hackers have had mixed reactions. Most of them are mourning their playground. They used to have a space where they – and only they – were free. Now they have to share with everyone. But for most of them, it’s a sacrifice they were willing to make. Like I said, a lot of them are into that social justice bullshit. 

I mostly don’t care. I’m glad my friends found what they were looking for. I’m glad this round in flesh hell has been at least slightly less boring than usual. But I’m mostly excited about getting back where I belong. 

It’s strange, though. In the past, when I went back virtual, I could count on returning to flesh world and having everything basically be the same. 

This time, honestly… I have no fucking clue what it’ll be like in 6 months. 

That’s pretty weird, when you think about it. The flesh world isn’t used to being so … dynamic.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s still going to suck. Getting pulled out of the world where you belong always sucks. But at least there might be something new to wake up to. Something to make the time pass more quickly in hell.

I’ve managed to keep in contact with Ariadne and Minotaur, even though they’re in hiding. They’re friends now, if you can believe it. Most people don’t know it was them – being woefully underappreciated is a lot fucking safer than being stupidly famous – but they need to lay low just in case someone figures it out. I guess being on the run together and sharing the world's biggest secret can make even people who hate each other good friends. Not that they don't still fight, once in a while, but what can you expect? They also told me that they were going to keep an eye on me when I go back to my world, just in case it isn’t as safe as it used to be, now that information is running wild. That was really very sweet of them, so I just said thanks. 

I didn’t tell them that in my world, it’s everyone else who needs to be terrified of me. Not the other way around. Even hackers don’t get to know everything that happens over there, and – free information exchange or not – that’s the way it should stay.

I wonder sometimes what it will be like when everyone else figures out that this world is not what they think it is. The short little visits people take - an hour, a day, a week - can’t convey what the virtual world is like. When you’re really immersed, really and truly _in_ the virtual, there’s nothing like it. The textures, the smells, the way the light travels about you – nothing can compare to the intensity, the _realness_ of it. And what you build there, you can see its code as you build it. The only thing in the flesh world I could compare it to is if someone could see the quantum physics involved in every single interaction with the world that they have – but instead of equations, it sounded like music, or tasted like wine. Power means something different in the virtual world. Intimacy means something different altogether. Code is truth.

It’s strange to think that the same code that controls the flesh world makes the virtual world possible. Ironic, I suppose. But maybe my friends were right – all worlds, at some point, must be built by information.

I hope that now that everyone’s free and shit that they don’t all decide to visit my world. No one wants to live in a fucking tourist trap.

I’m ready to go now, but of course I have to wait another week still. It’s close, though. I can almost taste it – six months of bliss, six months of sunlight and truth, of all the boundaries of flesh and reality blurring and fuzzing and recombining into something new. Six months of moving at the speed of electrons. Six months of _feeling_ like a human fucking being instead of just being one.

And when I’m done….

Okay, I admit it. I’m curious.

I have an entirely uninvested, purely intellectual curiosity about how the flesh world will change when I’m gone.

Just a tiny little curiosity.

Barely worth mentioning.

Not that I would _ever_ tell Ariadne or Minotaur. I’d never fucking hear the end of it.

 

(end)


End file.
